Priyamvada Gopal (Ph.D., Cornell 2000) is a Reader in Anglophone and Related Literatures at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Churchill College. She is the author of Literary Radicalism in India (Routledge, 2005) and The Indian Novel in English: Nation, History and Narration (Oxford, 2009). She has written for The Guardian, The Nation, Al-Jazeera, Open: the Magazine and The Hindu, among others. Her forthcoming book, Insurgent Empire, is due out with Verso in 2018.

Copies of the paper are available in the EDR mailbox in the English Department mailroom (GS 250, on the far right of the wall of English grad student boxes) and on the EDR Blackboard site.

Refreshments will be served.

The English Department Roundtable is a forum for graduate students in the English Department to share ideas across a wide variety of fields, time periods, and methodologies. Open to students at all stages of the program, the EDR gives us an opportunity to discuss our work in an informal setting with a group of our peers, to give and receive feedback about current projects, and to learn about the work being done by our colleagues. At a time in which the tremendous diversity of literary study has made it increasingly difficult to grasp the discipline as a whole, the purpose of the EDR is to foster a greater sense of intellectual community and cohesion within Cornell’s English Department, and to strengthen our work through increased collaboration with our peers.

Copies of the paper are available in the EDR mailbox in the English Department mailroom (GS 250, on the far right of the wall of English grad student boxes) and on the EDR Blackboard site.

Refreshments will be served.

The English Department Roundtable is a forum for graduate students in the English Department to share ideas across a wide variety of fields, time periods, and methodologies. Open to students at all stages of the program, the EDR gives us an opportunity to discuss our work in an informal setting with a group of our peers, to give and receive feedback about current projects, and to learn about the work being done by our colleagues. At a time in which the tremendous diversity of literary study has made it increasingly difficult to grasp the discipline as a whole, the purpose of the EDR is to foster a greater sense of intellectual community and cohesion within Cornell’s English Department, and to strengthen our work through increased collaboration with our peers.

Sponsored by the Class of 1916 Chair.

The Critical Race Series Lecture by Nelson Maldonado-Torres (Rutgers University)
“The World that Coloniality Built: Fanonian Meditations on Language and Love”
October 18th, 4:30pm
English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall

Nelson Maldonado-Torres is Associate Professor in the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies, member of the core faculty of the Comparative Literature Program, and faculty affiliate in the Doctoral Program in Women and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. He has been President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association (2008-2013), Director of the Center for Latino Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley (2009-2010), and Chair of the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers (2012-2015). He is a board member of the Frantz Fanon Foundation in Paris, France, and honorary member of the Fausto Reinaga Foundation in La Paz, Bolivia. His publications include Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity (Duke UP, 2008), and the collection of essays La descolonización y el giro decolonial (Decolonization and the decolonial turn), compiled by the Universidad de la Tierra (Chiapas, Mexico) in 2011. He has guest edited two issues on “mapping the decolonial turn” for the journal Transmodernity, and is currently working two book projects: Theorizing the Decolonial Turn and Fanonian Meditations.

Steven McCall reads from the newly published memoir of his father, Dan McCall, a novelist, scholar and Cornell professor of English emeritus, who died in 2012 at the age of 72. Dan McCall joined the faculty in 1966 and taught at Cornell for four decades. His 1974 novel, Jack the Bear, was translated into a dozen languages and made into a well-received 1993 Hollywood movie starring Danny DeVito.

Copies of the paper are available in the EDR mailbox in the English Department mailroom (GS 250, on the far right of the wall of English grad student boxes) and on the EDR Blackboard site.

Refreshments will be served.

The English Department Roundtable is a forum for graduate students in the English Department to share ideas across a wide variety of fields, time periods, and methodologies. Open to students at all stages of the program, the EDR gives us an opportunity to discuss our work in an informal setting with a group of our peers, to give and receive feedback about current projects, and to learn about the work being done by our colleagues. At a time in which the tremendous diversity of literary study has made it increasingly difficult to grasp the discipline as a whole, the purpose of the EDR is to foster a greater sense of intellectual community and cohesion within Cornell’s English Department, and to strengthen our work through increased collaboration with our peers.

Sponsored by the Class of 1916 Chair.

In A Word with J. Robert Lennon
"Some Important Third People"
November 15th, 4:30pm
English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall

In our age of memoir, social media, and young adult fiction, first person rules the roost. This talk will argue that first person is often misused in American fiction, and that a good writer should always consider third, in all its complex, ungainly glory. Professor Lennon will give examples from literature of third person's flexibility, and show writers how to use it.

In A Word is a new series that showcases the Creative Writing Program’s influences and contributions to the literary world by its dedicated faculty of poets and fiction writers like J. Robert Lennon. The author of eight novels, including Mailman, Familiar, and Broken River, and the story collections Pieces for the Left Hand and See You in Paradise, you can find out more about him at jrobertlennon.com.

Kim F. Hall delivers the Gottschalk Memorial Lecture, established in memory of Paul Gottschalk, Professor of English at Cornell, scholar of British Renaissance literature. Hall is the Lucyle Hook Chair of English and a Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College. Her book, Things of Darkness, used a black feminist approach to interpret Renaissance literature. This groundbreaking work on racial discourses in sixteenth and seventeenth century Britain helped generate a new wave of scholarship on race in Shakespeare and Renaissance/Early Modern texts. Her second book, Othello: Texts and Contexts offers readers visual and verbal textual materials that illuminate themes in Shakespeare’s play Othello: The Moor of Venice. She is currently working on two book projects: Sweet Taste of Empire, which examines the roles of race, aesthetics and gender in the Anglo-Caribbean sugar trade during the seventeenth century and a new project, Othello was My Grandfather: Shakespeare and the African Diaspora, which discusses Afrodiasporic appropriations of Othello.

Copies of the paper are available in the EDR mailbox in the English Department mailroom (GS 250, on the far right of the wall of English grad student boxes) and on the EDR Blackboard site.

Refreshments will be served.

The English Department Roundtable is a forum for graduate students in the English Department to share ideas across a wide variety of fields, time periods, and methodologies. Open to students at all stages of the program, the EDR gives us an opportunity to discuss our work in an informal setting with a group of our peers, to give and receive feedback about current projects, and to learn about the work being done by our colleagues. At a time in which the tremendous diversity of literary study has made it increasingly difficult to grasp the discipline as a whole, the purpose of the EDR is to foster a greater sense of intellectual community and cohesion within Cornell’s English Department, and to strengthen our work through increased collaboration with our peers.

Jonathan Culler's Theory of the Lyric is a serious intervention into how the lyric is conceived, thought, and taught. This conference, organized by professors Elizabeth S. Anker (English) and Grant Farred (Africana Studies), brings together scholars from the U.S., Canada, and Europe to address a series of debates about the theoretical impact and importance of Culler's groundbreaking work, exploring its relevance both to novel studies and to larger conversations about method unfolding within literary criticism and theory.
The conference opens on Friday afternoon and continues on Saturday.

Copies of the paper are available in the EDR mailbox in the English Department mailroom (GS 250, on the far right of the wall of English grad student boxes) and on the EDR Blackboard site.

Refreshments will be served.

The English Department Roundtable is a forum for graduate students in the English Department to share ideas across a wide variety of fields, time periods, and methodologies. Open to students at all stages of the program, the EDR gives us an opportunity to discuss our work in an informal setting with a group of our peers, to give and receive feedback about current projects, and to learn about the work being done by our colleagues. At a time in which the tremendous diversity of literary study has made it increasingly difficult to grasp the discipline as a whole, the purpose of the EDR is to foster a greater sense of intellectual community and cohesion within Cornell’s English Department, and to strengthen our work through increased collaboration with our peers.

Sponsored by the Class of 1916 Chair.

Shop Talk with Manjula Martin, Writer and Editor of Scratch

February 13, 5:00pm
English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall

Manjula Martin is editor of the anthology Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living. She created the blog Who Pays Writers? and was the founder and editor of Scratch magazine, an online periodical about the business of being a writer.

Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living will be available for purchase.

Copies of the paper are available in the EDR mailbox in the English Department mailroom (GS 250, on the far right of the wall of English grad student boxes) and on the EDR Blackboard site.

Refreshments will be served.

The English Department Roundtable is a forum for graduate students in the English Department to share ideas across a wide variety of fields, time periods, and methodologies. Open to students at all stages of the program, the EDR gives us an opportunity to discuss our work in an informal setting with a group of our peers, to give and receive feedback about current projects, and to learn about the work being done by our colleagues. At a time in which the tremendous diversity of literary study has made it increasingly difficult to grasp the discipline as a whole, the purpose of the EDR is to foster a greater sense of intellectual community and cohesion within Cornell’s English Department, and to strengthen our work through increased collaboration with our peers.

Copies of the paper will be available in the EDR mailbox in the English Department mailroom (GS 250, on the far right of the wall of English grad student boxes) and on the EDR Blackboard site.

Refreshments will be served.

The English Department Roundtable is a forum for graduate students in the English Department to share ideas across a wide variety of fields, time periods, and methodologies. Open to students at all stages of the program, the EDR gives us an opportunity to discuss our work in an informal setting with a group of our peers, to give and receive feedback about current projects, and to learn about the work being done by our colleagues. At a time in which the tremendous diversity of literary study has made it increasingly difficult to grasp the discipline as a whole, the purpose of the EDR is to foster a greater sense of intellectual community and cohesion within Cornell’s English Department, and to strengthen our work through increased collaboration with our peers.

Sponsored by the Class of 1916 Chair.

Lecture with Anna Kornbluh(U. of Illinois, Chicago)
"Snapshots of Political Formalism: William Henry Fox Talbot, Karl Marx, and the Cameras of Collective Life"
March 10, 4:30pm
Guerlac Room, A.D. White House

Jeff VanderMeer, fiction writer, reads from his work as part of the Spring 2017 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series.

Reception and book signing to follow in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall

English Department Roundtable: Abram Coetsee"Was Graffiti Ephemeral? Three episodes from the (an)archive of style-writing in the late demos of New York City, 1965-2013."
March 24, 2:30pm
English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall
Moderator: TBA

Copies of the paper will be available in the EDR mailbox in the English Department mailroom (GS 250, on the far right of the wall of English grad student boxes) and on the EDR Blackboard site.

Refreshments will be served.

The English Department Roundtable is a forum for graduate students in the English Department to share ideas across a wide variety of fields, time periods, and methodologies. Open to students at all stages of the program, the EDR gives us an opportunity to discuss our work in an informal setting with a group of our peers, to give and receive feedback about current projects, and to learn about the work being done by our colleagues. At a time in which the tremendous diversity of literary study has made it increasingly difficult to grasp the discipline as a whole, the purpose of the EDR is to foster a greater sense of intellectual community and cohesion within Cornell’s English Department, and to strengthen our work through increased collaboration with our peers.

Poet Eamon Grennan reads from his work as part of the Spring 2017 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series.

This reading is made possible by Eamon McEneaney’s Cornell teammates, family, and friends. In addition to being one of Cornell’s most talented and best-loved athletes, Eamon McEneaney ’77 was a dedicated husband and father, loyal friend, prolific writer and poet, and an American hero. He died on September 11, 2001, in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Reception and book signing to follow in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall

Copies of the paper are available in the EDR mailbox in the English Department mailroom (GS 250, on the far right of the wall of English grad student boxes) and on the EDR Blackboard site.

Refreshments will be served.

The English Department Roundtable is a forum for graduate students in the English Department to share ideas across a wide variety of fields, time periods, and methodologies. Open to students at all stages of the program, the EDR gives us an opportunity to discuss our work in an informal setting with a group of our peers, to give and receive feedback about current projects, and to learn about the work being done by our colleagues. At a time in which the tremendous diversity of literary study has made it increasingly difficult to grasp the discipline as a whole, the purpose of the EDR is to foster a greater sense of intellectual community and cohesion within Cornell’s English Department, and to strengthen our work through increased collaboration with our peers.

Sponsored by the Class of 1916 Chair.

Reading by Lisa Russ Spaar

April 27, 4:30pm
Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, G70 Klarman Hall

Lisa Russ Spaar, poet and essayist, reads from her work as the final installment of the Spring 2017 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series.

Reception and book signing to follow in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall

In A Word is a new series that showcases the Creative Writing Program’s influences and contributions to the literary world by its dedicated faculty of poets and fiction writers. Poet Lyrae VanClief-Stefanon and scholar Dagmawi Woubshet converse about their work.

Fall 2016 Schedule

The Fall 2016 Zalaznick Reading Series kicks off with a celebration of Prof. Emeritus James McConkey on the occasion of his 95th birthday. Three of McConkey's award-winning former students will also read from their own works in his honor.

Graduate Student seminar with Jeffrey Masten (Northwestern University). This seminar is being offered in conjunction with the Paul Gottschalk Memorial Lecture by Jeffrey Masten at 4:30pm in HEC Auditorium (GSH 132).

English Department Roundtable: Laura Francis
"The Rules of the Game: Allegory and Space in A Game at Chess"
October 28th, 2:30pm
English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall
Moderator: Stephen Kim

Chris Abani, poet and writer, reads from his works as part of the Fall 2016 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series.

Forms, Figures, and Difference: A Conference in Honor of Fredric Bogel
November 4th, 4:30 pm
English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall
Reception to follow in the Pale Fire Lounge

Exploring the texts, forms, genres, and critical approaches that Rick Bogel has brought to literary theory and to eighteenth-century studies and beyond, this conference includes presentations of new work as well as panels that reflect and develop Rick’s contribution. The conference opens on Friday afternoon and continues for a full day on Saturday.

Exploring the texts, forms, genres, and critical approaches that Rick Bogel has brought to literary theory and to eighteenth-century studies and beyond, this conference includes presentations of new work as well as panels that reflect and develop Rick’s contribution. The conference opens on Friday afternoon and continues for a full day on Saturday.

English Department Roundtable: Amber Harding
"'But so it is': Contradictions of Optimism & Doubt in James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”
December 2nd, 2:30pm
English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall
Moderator: TBA